Tic Tac Crack

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Breath Mints

The clock, it taunts me, "tic tac tic tac tic tac..."

Orange tic tacs recently entered my life, with profound consequence: a breath mint habit akin to crack addiction. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But I pass on this tale of tasty woe with the hope that others may recognize in themselves the potential monster before it's too late. This, friends, is the story of orange tic tacs and the breath mint beast which they unleashed.

For the record, I do not have bad breath.

I stood, innocently enough, on line at the grocery store, waiting to pay for my food and be on my way. The old hunched-over hag ahead of me was drawing out her transaction with an interminable submersion into her change purse. "A dime... that's 12... what was it-$22.88? Here's a nickel... 17...Oh, heeeere's that coupon for the Kleenex! Scan that for me, dear."

In anticipation of a reduced total, her wrinkly-knuckled little fingers dropped a flurry of coins back into the purse. Besieged by horrid, violent, unspeakable thoughts, I sought distraction.

Little did I know that two of my better traits--impulsiveness and an addictive personality--were about to merge over a tiny clear plastic container into an unholy union of dependency.

A case of orange tic tac breath mints.

Understand, I'm generally uninterested in all things gum, mint, or sucking candy. I tried, as a younger man, to find a gum with lasting flavor. There isn't one. Ads proclaiming otherwise are malicious lies. A piece of gum may be briefly delicious, but the unending wan and tasteless wad with which you are quickly left ruins the experience.

I was inexplicably drawn to those tic tacs. They beckoned to me, bright baby orange beacons piercing through the maddening brain sizzle induced by that demon of a frozen- and paper-goods consumer. You might say she was the serpent tempting me toward the forbidden tic tacs of Knowledge. Well, maybe not forbidden. And not exactly knowledge. Okay, poor metaphor. Nevertheless, partaking of their minty goodness would bring me delight, but a delight whose price was no less than the forlorn and forsaken depths of damnation.